Speaker authentication, such as speaker verification and speaker identification, over a telephone, for example, has challenged product and service providers who, in turn, have typically utilized call center personnel in combination with stringently structured voice prompt systems to elicit constrained responses from users via a telephone keypad. This methodology is time consuming for users, such that speech recognition and/or voiceprint recognition appear to be attractive speaker authentication tools. Unfortunately, speech recognition and voiceprint recognition can be inaccurate at least part of the time, and training procedures to improve speech and voiceprint recognition can be time consuming, thereby further inconveniencing the user. Moreover, attempts to adapt a speech recognition system to a particular speaker are substantially fruitless when the speaker has not yet been identified through an authentication process.
The need remains for a speaker authentication system and method that authenticates speakers based on speaker voiceprints, and improves reliability by fusing information, such as speaker keypad entries, speech recognition attempts, caller ID, and personal information database contents, to achieve more convenient and reliable speaker authentication with increased security. The need further remains for a speaker authentication system and method that implicitly develops speaker voiceprints without inconveniencing a user. The present invention meets the aforementioned needs.